1.) Another policymaker in favor of a first half rate hike. Cleveland Federal Reserve President Loretta Mester supports a rate hike by June. Via Michael Derby at the Wall Street Journal:

Expressing confidence weak inflation will eventually rise again, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said Wednesday the U.S. central bank remains on track for raising rates in the next few months.

Noting that Fed policy isn't on a "pre-set path," Ms. Mester said "if incoming economic information supports my forecast, I would be comfortable with liftoff in the first half of this year." Because Fed policy actions affect the economy over a long period of time, the central banker said the Fed will need to act before it has fully achieved its job and price mandates.

She is, however, watching the survey data:

The official told reporters after her speech that if inflation expectations began to weaken, especially ones derived from surveys, "that would give me pause" when it comes to advocating for rate increases.

While the timing of any policy move remains in flux, Mester's basic story is close to consensus: The Fed is looking at putting the economy on a glide path to achieving its mandates, which means moving ahead of those mandates.

2.) But another is pointing out the danger of low inflation. Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren doesn't speak to the timing of rate hikes, but low inflation is clearly on his mind:

Of course today, after significant labor market improvement, and with the horizon over which inflation will return to its target being uncertain, inflation has taken on a more prominent role in our deliberations.

Currently, an obvious caveat in interpreting the low inflation rate in the U.S. is the supporting role played by the recent decline in energy prices. Oil shocks have been associated with major changes in monetary policy before. The failure to control inflation in the United States during the 1970s, in the presence of an adverse oil supply shock, highlighted a serious dilemma facing monetary policy at that time. Importantly in that case, what might have been a temporary pass-through of oil to non-oil prices turned into a more lasting problem with overall inflation, as wage and price dynamics at that time helped turn increases in oil prices into fairly protracted increases in overall inflation. Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Volcker is rightfully recognized for taking forceful action to address the situation and ultimately tame inflation in the United States.

Currently, a concern is that central banks are facing the mirror image of the problem in the 1970s. The problem of significantly undershooting inflation – a dynamic which could well keep interest rates at the zero lower bound – is likely to be a key challenge to central bankers in the first two decades of the 21st century. And I would say that as with the oil shock in the 1970s, the current shock has served to accentuate a potential monetary policy pitfall – in this case, the failure to quickly and vigorously address a significant undershooting of inflation targets, potentially leaving economies stagnant at the zero lower bound.

He would support later rather than sooner with regards to the first rate hike.

3.)Fed ready to lower NAIRU? I have argued in the past that if the Fed is faced with ongoing slow wage growth, they would need to reassess their estimates of NAIRU. Cardiff Garcia reminded me:

A reduction in the Fed's estimate of the natural rate of unemployment would likely mean a delayed and more gradual path of policy tightening, should of course the Fed ever get the chance to pull off the zero bound. Keep an eye on this issue!

4.) Will the Fed remain "patient" in March? Jon Hilsenrath at the Wall Street Journal says the Fed needs to remove "patient" from the FOMC statement in March if they want to move in June:

The "patient" assurance, Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen has said, means no rate increases for at least two more policy meetings. The next two policy meetings after March are in April and June. If officials think they might raise rates in June, they need to remove "patient" in March to give themselves the option to proceed if economic data justify a move by June.

Interesting - this is a stricter interpretation of "patient" than I had from Yellen's comments. I did not think that "patient" would always mean just two more meetings, only that in December "patient" meant two more meetings. During the last rate hike cycle, the Fed maintained "patient" until March, switched to "measured" in May, and hiked in June. So they hiked the second meeting after the last "patient." Does that meet the definition that Yellen gave in December? I don't know, but I an not sure she meant to imply that "patient" always and forever means no hike for the next two meetings. So I guess we have our first question for the next press conference. At the moment, following the last cycle, I don't think that keeping "patient" means they are taking June off the table.

5.) Employment report watch.Calculated Risk notes that Goldman Sachs cut their forecast for tomorrow's employment report to a 210k gain in nonfarm payrolls and a 5.5% unemployment rate, at the low end of consensus and similar to my forecast. But the January number might be an even bigger crapshoot than usual anyway. Via Bloomberg:

A significant risk to the January payroll print is that the seasonal adjustment may not be properly calibrated. If employers added more seasonal workers than usual based on a firmer assessment of economic conditions, then there may be more layoffs in January. If the seasonal factors do not properly account for this, then a weaker-than-expected payroll gain could result.

And note that one number doesn't make a trend:

Underlying labor market momentum is largely being sustained, as economic growth remains decent, albeit slower than the mid-year hot streak between Q2 and Q3 of 2014. As such, if January employment disappoints, it is probably an anomaly related to seasonal adjustment issues, not a meaningful downshift in the pace of hiring.

The ongoing improvement in consumer attitudes is an encouraging sign that households continue to sense a healthy labor market.

6.) Falling interest rates worldwide. The global push for easier monetary policy continues. China's central bank is now officially in easing mode, while the Danish Central Bank moves deeper into negative territory. The Fed wants to be able to move in the opposite direction, but financial markets are telling them this isn't the time to move off of zero. The Fed will resist - this isn't 2011 when the US economy was much further from reaching its employment mandate than it is today. That said, they eventually had to relent and ease in 1998, so holding steady would be familiar territory (they are not bringing QE back to life yet). But will they worry that easing then helped sustain an asset bubble, a situation they do not want to repeat? Increasingly, the Fed looks to be back in a place they hoped they had left behind - between a rock and a hard place.

And with that we await tomorrow's employment report. Sorry I don't have time to give each of these topics the time they deserve.

"Across many markers of individualism, social class was the only factor that systematically preceded changes in individualism over time, tentatively suggesting a causal relationship between them," explains psychological scientist and study author Igor Grossmann of the University of Waterloo.

According to Grossmann, who conducted the research with co-author Michael Varnum of the Arizona State University, the study represents one of the first ever large-scale attempts to test various theories explaining cultural change in individualism over a time span longer than 30 or 40 years. ...

Across all cultural indicators, the researchers found evidence that individualism has been rising steadily over the last 150 years. ...

"We were surprised that only one of the six tested cultural psychological theories was any good for statistically predicting changes in US individualism over time," says Grossmann. "The only theoretical claim that we found systematic support for is the one suggesting that the rise in individualism is due to societal changes in social class, from blue collar to white collar occupations."

The researchers note that these data do not allow them to draw a conclusive causal link between occupational status and individualism, but they do suggest that the other factors examined were unlikely to account for rising individualism.

Contrary to popular notions, the research indicates that increasing individualism is not a recent phenomenon. ...

Has the experience of the crisis changed your view of the central bank policy toolkit?

Governor Stein: Yes, on two dimensions. First, on the toolkit insofar as it has to do with crisis prevention; and second, insofar as it has to do with what you do in the aftermath, when the economy is very weak and you are stuck at the zero lower bound.

Let me focus on the first of these two—what we've learned about crisis prevention. Speaking broadly, the tools of central banks can be classified into monetary policy, lender of last resort, and regulation. You might argue that – since we've learned that financial crises are more damaging then we had previously thought – we should use each of these tools to do more in the way of either crisis prevention or crisis mitigation. To the extent that there exists a consensus, this is surely true with respect to regulation. That is to say, I think that everyone basically believes that regulation in the period leading up to the crisis was inadequate and that we need to do better.

The other two are a little more interesting. You might have thought that one lesson from the crisis is that central banks acting as a lender of last resort was an important and powerful part of the response. Yet, the general thrust of Dodd-Frank is to make it harder to use the lender of last resort function for nonbanks like broker-dealer firms – namely, to make it more difficult to invoke Federal Reserve Act Section 13(3) powers in "unusual and exigent circumstances" for a specific firm. I think it's an open question whether that's a useful direction to go. I might lean against that a little bit: if you have the ability to regulate broker-dealers effectively, and you can regulate them as stringently as a bank, then you might want to have the ability to make the Federal Reserve's lender of last resort capabilities available to them as well.

And the second is with respect to monetary policy. If you take the view that we should be working with all of our tools to mitigate crises, should monetary policy be drawn into trying to reduce the odds of a crisis, or more generally, should it concern itself with buildups of risk in financial markets ex ante? I don't know if there's a consensus lesson there, but clearly the question has come more to the fore.